


Espionage, Counterespionage

by FeoplePeel



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Dubious use of spy network, Epistolary, F/M, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 03:13:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11569122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeoplePeel/pseuds/FeoplePeel
Summary: I liked Tium. He said I had eyes like cut glass. You should use that. How is Sunshine?-HAs bright as ever. And that was me. I said every nice thing about you that's ever been said. Stop rubbing elbows (amongst other things) with my spy network.-V





	Espionage, Counterespionage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rushvalleys (breakthisspell)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/breakthisspell/gifts).



> Thank you, rushvalleys, for the excellent prompt and goddamnrey for betaing :D

Marian Hawke was dying.

At least this was the rather melodramatic turn her thoughts had taken after she had sicked everything she'd managed to eat before boarding the Siren’s Call. Again.

Behind her lay Kirkwall and...everything really. Her whole life packed up and shipped off once again only this time, when she reached out a hand, there was no Carver to swat her aside and snore himself back to sleep.

No Bethany to reach over and squeeze her fingers tightly between her own.

It was a near miss, convincing her sister to stay; Bethany might later call it a trick, if time and the idea of freedom could be considered a clever ruse. She wasn't going to tell her not to come, especially as they were seeking the remnants of their father's misbegotten youth, but she would always remind her that now, at least, she had a choice.

And when given the choice between adventure on the high seas and protecting the mages of the Free Marches, it had been no decision for Bethany at all.

Convincing the others had been less hard and more...unsettling. She should have expected what everyone _else_ expected of her. Stay, Marian, and rebuild again! Fix what happened, as though stone and Guild meetings would set it right.

Varric had been in those stuffy meetings for so long that he nearly missed her leaving. She didn't _think_ it was on purpose, but then...Varric had always been good at not showing his hand.

She settled back into the hammock, swaying lightly with the ship and, figuratively, continued to die.

When she awoke again, it was to the smell of pipe smoke and with the feel of a thick fur across her shoulders.

“Do you want your bed back?”

Isabela must have known or at least suspected she was awake. She made no attempt to move. “I won’t be sleeping for a while.”

“Bad dreams?”

“No worse than usual.” Isabela attempted a small smile when she met Hawke’s eyes, waving off her concern. “I was planning on coming back soon. Never thought I’d be bringing you, that’s all.”

Hawke stood, cracking her back and swinging her legs over the side of the hammock. Her stomach had calmed, somewhat, during the hours she slept. She stepped across the cabin, looking over Isabela’s shoulder to the map she was etching upon, namely the expanse of Rivain where she appeared to be plotting a decent course.

“Father never talked about it, but Mother swore down he was from Rivain.”

“Fenris says he’ll be parting ways with us there, temporarily,” said Isabela, distracted.

 “Anything we need to step in on?”

 “He'll keep us in the know. Just causing a bit of mischief, I’m sure,” she said. “He's not the only one.”

“Oh?”

Isabela finally turned her attention to Hawke. “Uprisings being reported in from all over Thedas. At the Circles.” Isabela’s brows lifted in what was as close as the woman ever got to an _I told you so_ , because who _couldn’t_ have predicted this outcome? “There’s also this.”

Hawke took the letter Isabela proffered, slipping a dagger under the seal to open it with care. “When…?”

Isabela laid down her pipe beside the map. “Sully caught Reland slipping it in here early this morning.”

As she expected, the page was entirely in Varric’s hand. “Did you know he was in Varric's employ?”

“Apparently he's in _yours_ now. Won't swab the bloody deck, but he can deliver your mail?” Isabela’s scoff was more affectionate than scolding. “ _Really_.”

Knowing she would reread it again and again, she felt less guilty when her eyes were caught halfway down the page at Bethany’s name.

_I sent the mutt with Sunshine and Daisy. Templars are beating down the doors here. If this keeps up, I might have to leg it for a while with everyone else. Don’t worry, I’ll find a way to keep in touch--_

“Trouble?” Isabela interrupted, picking up her pipe again.

“The usual sort,” Hawke smiled, folding up the letter for later. 

Hawke found Reland easily enough, though he had the same starstruck look she had learned to ignore over the past year and a half.

“He could have found a more subtle man to slip into Isabela’s ranks,” she muttered to the space beside her heels where a mabari should be. After a moment’s more thought, she turned back and wrote as much to Varric instead.

* * *

Hawke recalled more about her father than she wished, some days. His voice, the feel of his hand over her brow, the smell of magic just cast. She was not so sentimental to remember his handwriting. It was only through letters kept by her mother that she remembered that. She read the same writing now, on different pages, with a furrowed brow, looking for _anything_ between the lines of the ink.

“Letter for you, serah!”

Hawke slowly raised her gaze to the elf who had interrupted her task. “Me?”

“To be delivered to a rogue matching this description.” He turned the paper in his hand towards her. “From where I'm standing that’d be you, so I reckon yes!”

She read the outside of the letter and blushed. It detailed her in the flowery language that peppered some of Varric’s saucier novels. She _had_ tried to avoid listening to it when it applied to her.

Inside, she read:

 _H,  
__I picked Reland_ **_because_ ** _the man has all the subtlety of a hammer. Isabela would know I wasn't trying to get one over on her, at least--_

“Wait! Sit down have a drink with me.” She waved the elf back before he could reach the tavern door. “What did you say your name was?”

* * *

The bulk of their letters were kept short, for safety. It was enough to know that the other was still alive to write.

_I liked Tium. He said I had eyes like cut glass. You should use that. How is Sunshine?  
-H _

_As bright as ever. And that was me._ **_I_ ** _said every nice thing about you that's ever been said. Stop rubbing elbows (amongst other things) with my spy network.  
-V_  

 _Bresall is very nice. A bit chatty. Let me know you were finally forced out of the Guild. And Kirkwall? What happened to “I'll tell you If something changes?”  
-H_  

_A temporary situation, I assure you. Everyone is safe. Also, If you're trying to convince me you'd be good at brokering information you could start by not using names. I've gotten complaints.  
-V _

_I've not. I think your spy network likes me more than you now. I'm safe too. Was wondering--_

_SNAP_

_“Ssh!”_

“Shit.”

She leaned her head against the bars of her cell, narrowing her focus on the last words she wrote. He'd know something was wrong if she sent _that_ nonsense.

“I _told_ you you should have let me write it!” The guard eyed her, accusatory.

“He’d know it wasn't me! He’d ask _inconvenient_ questions.”

“So we'll lie!” the guard hissed back “It’s what we do!”

“I'm meant to believe that somehow through the dozens of hands this will pass through that _not one of you_ will mention that I'm, contrary to what this letter says, locked in a Tevinter jail cell?” Hawke leveled a flat stare at the woman. “To the man who pays your salary.”

“...I'll admit it's a bit of a stretch when you paint the whole picture.”

She tossed the letter over her shoulder. “What are one of you doing all the way out here anyway?”

“Oh there's always at least one of us following you now, serah. Pays triple.”

“That explains quite a bit,” Hawke said. “I don't suppose you'll let me out of here will you?”

She stared at her chestplate. “I'm on duty!”

Hawke sighed. “Fair enough.”

* * *

She received Varric's next letter before boarding the Siren’s Call. It was very short.

_How was prison?  
-V _

“I'm in trouble,” she told the spy across from her. “Suggestions…?”

“Siccle.”

“Suggestions, Siccle?”

Siccle gained her trust immediately by taking the question completely seriously. “He already knows the situation--”

“Stupid Poal.” She curled her lip, thinking it may be a bit childish to tack on _tattletale._

“So do what he does. Distract him.”

“Out of curiosity, how often do you read our letters?”

“Pretty much every time, serah. You're very bad at self-censorship.”

Hawke conceded the point with a nod, then took out her tools to write.

_A wonderful distraction by which Rivaini and the Elf made their escape! Have you heard from them? We should be meeting up again next week at which point I can give further details on the exciting escapades of my genealogical hunt!  
-H_

Siccle looked over the letter, mildly impressed. “That should work.”

“Yes!” She managed to hold her grin at the paper for a few moments before it slowly slid from her face. “All right, get me a new sheet.”

_I was there for two weeks before your girl found me and I remembered what it was like to be hungry. I know you worry about me. I worry about you too. We should. This is dangerous stuff we're doing when we're not there to watch one another's backs. I don't like it.  
-H_

“How is it that being tailed by you, a series of _spies_ is sucking the indecency from my bones?” She stared across the table accusingly.

Siccle smiled indulgently. “Don't know, serah.”

Hawke held on to one edge of the paper, her own expression softening. “ _Don't_ read this one.”

* * *

The letters...changed, after that. Nothing so dramatic as sonnets or confessions of love, more like they’d both been given permission to write to one another the way they used to speak when they needed one another most. This felt like one of those times.

It took Hawke a few weeks to notice that Varric had stopped writing altogether.

“We should go to Kirkwall,” Fenris said, reading through the last letter she received for clues, as though she hadn’t done the same a thousand times.

“What am I doing out here anyway?” Hawke ran a hand through her hair. “Chasing sunbeams? My sister's in the Free Marches! Varric could be in trouble.”

“No, this is ridiculous.” Isabela grabbed Hawke’s face between calloused palms, voice firm. “You're not chasing some fantasy, Hawke. What we saw in the Warden’s prison was real. The letters between your father and the Warden-Commander? That’s _real_.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying everything leads back here. The Wardens, your father, the lyrium,” Isabela leaned back, hands falling to her side. “Don't you want answers?”

Hawke’s shoulders fell with a sigh. “You want us to what? Stroll up to Adamant and knock on the door?”

Isabela stared between the two of them. “I have a friend.”

Hawke’s gaze settled on Fenris. He lowered the page in his hand to the table. “I’ll be where you need me, Hawke.”

She looked at the letter. Isabela laid a hand over hers. “They _want you there_. That means he wouldn't.”

“Dammit.” Hawke felt her jaw clench, but she couldn’t deny the truth of it. “I’ll need a day”

Hawke made her way above deck, finding the man she was looking for as easily as she had the first time.

“Reland?”

“Um...yes?”

“Listen,” she held out the letter to him. “How do I get this thing to work backward?”

* * *

Siccle, Garesh, and Bresall were gathered in front of her. “Just you three?”

“We’re the only ones within a hundred miles,” Bresall shrugged.

“That's all you asked,” Garesh pointed out, using his elbows to draw himself further up against the bar. She had never met him before and found he was short, even by dwarvish standards.

“Guess I just expected them to crawl from the woodwork.”

“So you just want us to tell you what's going on with Messere Tethras?” Bresall said, sticking a finger in her ear and twisting.

“Yes. Please,” she added as an afterthought.

“For what?”

“How about his continued existence and your continued employment?”

Garesh slid a drink towards himself. “That's not hugely motivating.”

“Yeah. I don't work for clouds and whistles. Serah,” Bresall swerved to correct, seeming to realise who she was talking to at the last minute.

“I'll do it,” Siccle shrugged, and Hawke was reminded again why he was her favorite. “I like my job. I think I know others who'll lend a hand too.”

“Thanks.” Hawke shot him what she had been told was a _brilliant smile_. It must have been less brilliant than she had been led to believe as she only received another shrug in return.

“We won't sell you out,” Garesh said, taking a swig of his drink, “if it makes you feel better!”

“Yeah I've been following you long enough I know I don't want you chasing me.” Bresall raised a hand, calling for her own drink.

“Clever.”

* * *

It took a few weeks more for Siccle to get word back to her.

“Kidnapped? By _the Divine_?” Isabela’s laugh went high, likely at the absurdity of the word.

“Her Right and Left, yes,” Reland said, tone too serious to be mistaken for a lie.

“Okay,” Hawke said. “This is okay. The Seeker just wants me right? So I go to the meeting with the Divine and--”

“I wouldn't.” Siccle eyed her from where he was leaning against the mast of the Siren’s Call. “I don't know what they think you or the Warden can do about the Circles on your own, but I know you've been smart to avoid it so far.”

“He’s right,” Fenris nodded in her direction. “There are old wounds. We've met some of them. _Made_ some of them. Fancy titles aren't going to patch them up.”

”We’re to go ashore at the Storm Coast and meet my contact in Redcliffe,” Isabela offered. “It’s close enough should Varric truly need our help.”

“It'll be my first time back in Ferelden,” Hawke stared over the railing towards what land she could make out in the distance. “I wonder how it's changed.”

A great heave against the side of the ship sent Hawke sprinting to the deck. In the sky was a swathe of green and only black, the feel of magic laced through the air around her.

Isabela stepped up beside her. “Ten gold whatever that is starts exactly where we’re headed.”

“I'll bet ten more that I helped cause it somehow.”

To Hawke’s surprise, Garesh met them on the Storm Coast. After their last meeting, the sight of him clearly awaiting their arrival put Hawke on edge. The look he wore did nothing to ease her disquiet.

“I'm assuming you're here about that?” Hawke motioned to the sky.

“Personal favor,” Garesh said gruffly. “Divine’s dead. The Breach opened at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. S’where Messere Tethras was being taken to speak with her. Thought you outta know.”

Hawke wasn't sure how, but she eventually managed to swallow. “Thank you.”

“With your lot, may not mean much. Dying and such.” He awkwardly reached out to slap her bicep. She knew what he meant to say, but she couldn't find the humour in the sentiment for the life of her. “I'll uh...keep my ears open.”

* * *

Hawke couldn't remember how she dealt with Father and Carver, too busy taking care of Mother and Bethany. Or Mother, having a whole city to protect.

 _Now there's this_. The sky was still torn in places. Hawke didn't have a full grasp on what that meant, but she knew people were taking advantage. She knew when she stopped worrying about that, she had to worry about Varric, so she only stopped staring at the sky to ask how close they were to their contact.

Maybe being busy was never the issue. Maybe she made herself this way.

“Do we need to stop?” Isabela asked two days out from Redcliffe.

“No time. We have a job to do.” Hawke shoved her thoughts down, attempting a smile. “And judging by the sky were on a time limit.”

* * *

_Stay away from Inquisition. Eyes everywhere._

Hawke stared from the letter, recognizable even without the signature--concern and relief on the same page--to Siccle, who stood silent and equally uninformative.

“Can _you_ stay nearby?” She tucked the letter into the pouch at her side.

“It’s my job,” he said.

“Strictly speaking, I’m not your boss.”

“Pay’s the same,” he pointed out. “Besides, he seems to need a little more watching than you these days.”

* * *

Hawke entered a largely intact Redcliffe, though there was an obvious charge in the air. Perhaps it was all the mages. There were mages everywhere now, with the Circle upsets.

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting of Alistair Theirin. Someone more grandiose, even after her run in with Zevran. Less sarcastic, definitely. She liked him.

He read through her father’s letters, sighing after he placed the last on the table. “This only strengthens my argument against Clarel. I wish our paths had crossed sooner.”

“ _Every_ Warden is hearing the calling?” Fenris leaned forward, eyes narrow. “Even you?”

“Yes,” Alistair said. “But I've learned to question where blood magic and Archdemons are involved.”

“Wise. How did the Warden-Commander take your leaving?”

“Not well. My status as a Warden is...under inquiry--”

“They can do that?”

“They can make an exile sound formal, in any case. I imagine I'll be looking for a bolthole soon,” he said, turning to Isabela. “Any suggestions?”

“I may know a few people.”

* * *

“We could--”

“I’m telling you for _the last time_ , Hawke,” Isabela shot her a look over the boiling pot between them, “if you fight the dragon, you’re going alone.”

They arrived to a Crestwood overrun with undead, crawling from underneath the lake, and holed up up in an old smuggler’s den outside of the town. She’d spent the last week sending the few informants Siccle had wrangled for her out into the Western Approach on Alistair’s suggestion.

Sandal and Bodahn’s arrival, all the way from their shop in Val Royeaux, was a happy surprise. And with them, a very short correspondence from someone Bodahn claimed to be called Jenny.

  _You've been_ **_spying_ ** _on me with my own people. This explains so much. I’m incredibly proud.  
-V_  

Knowing Reland would be back within the day, she turned over the page to respond. 

_When the Breach opened, Garesh came to find me. I thought you were dead. I’m not a writer. I can't describe what it felt like.  
_

She found her spot on the page again and made the attempt anyway.

* * *

Siccle watched Sera sneak out of Skyhold’s kitchen with an expression on her face that had him keeping his distance, waiting for her to catch sight of him when they reached the tavern instead.

“You again?” She pulled out her tunic, and he controlled his expression as several handfuls of cookies tumbled onto the table between them. “Piss off. Or have one. You want one?”

Siccle took a cookie, tossing it from hand to hand. He watched Varric and Hawke at the bar, elbows bumping together. “I appreciate you lending me a hand.”

Her lip curled. “Weren’t you I was helping.”

“Them, then.”

“What do you care anyway?” she said between open-mouthed bites. Her gaze narrowed on him. “You know, if you care so much about love and all that bullocks, you should drop out of his game and join mine.”

“The Jennies?” He raised a brow, stashing the treat away. It was a thought. “I’ll get back to you.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Siccle!” Hawke’s voice called from across the room. “Come settle something for me!”

He rose from his chair, nodding at Sera. “Oh,” he said, pulling out a few pages and sliding them across the table. “Have your friends deliver these? I’ll hide manure under the training equipment before the next rotation.”

Sera took the letters with a high pitched giggle. “Yes!”

Sera broke the letter's seals, one after the other, and read with a cookie dangling from her lips.

 _Reland,_  
_Direct the Admiral and the elf to leave Crestwood. Will be approaching from Southwest with Inquisition scouts._

 _Bresall,  
_ _Remain in Ostwick after delivery. Speak to Tium. Letter from the Champion enclosed._

 _Sunshine,_  
_It has been impressed upon my person that I_ **_absolutely must_ ** _call you this. Surely, though, you can see several holes in the logic of pseudonyms standing, as I now do, in the center of an Inquisition fortress, surrounded by spies. One of which, our Chantry sister, Leliana!_  
_I’m with Varric too, which is a boon, especially in an unfamiliar place. I feel as though it should be a given, as well. A terrible situation, and that’s where the two of our names are, right next to one another. We didn’t meet so long ago, did we? And yet I feel...I can’t write that to you. You’ll scold me. Truthfully, I’d give anything to hear the harshest reprimand in your voice, right now._  
_No? Blast._  
_Already, I’m running out of things I can, or rather should, say to you. We ride with a new ally tomorrow, to Adamant. You are safe, Varric is with me. Things will be fine, and I will see you when we are clear of whatever mess I’ve stumbled into this time._  
_Forever,  
__Your Sister_

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: Some kind of post-DA2 paper trail, where Hawke is led back to Varric/Bethany/Aveline and co. by Varric's hand, can definitely incorporate canon and canon-era events and introspective Hawke and/or Varric. Maybe she doesn't know specifically that Varric is the one helping her out at first? Maybe she gets hints to "stop by x tavern at y time" from shopkeepers and etc. in Varric's weird network of people. I see this as tying the ends of DA2 and the beginnings of DAI/HLTA together, but if you don't, write it the way you see it. I've been sitting on this prompt for a while honestly and don't know if I'll get around to writing it, so I'd love some new eyes on it!


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